A ranting Irish writer called John-Paul Finnegan harangues his friend “Rob Doyle” as they take the ferry – the Ulysses, no less – from Holyhead to Dublin. The prolific Finnegan writes in a mode he calls “paltry realism” and has completed the 13th volume of his 11-volume novel, Nevah Trust a Christian: “Paltry realism means writing shit, he said. What I mean to say is, what is art, only a howl against death. Are we agreed on this, Rob? he demanded. Yet why is it that so much art tries to do the opposite, to ignore, even to deny death? Have you thought about this?”
It’s a bold opening: a story that sets up a metafictional diving board and leaps from it with misanthropic glee. I cackled at Finnegan’s takedown of the tourists who flock to Dublin for Bloomsday: “fat, mental penguins”, indeed. As the Ulysses approaches port, however, Finnegan lapses into self-absorbed mumbling and doubt creeps in. Readerly doubt follows. Is the diving board a plank? Is this collection itself in the paltry realistic mode? This isn’t going to be deliberately shit, is it?
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